Although nothing has happened yet, this winter will be incredibly fun as we watch the New York Mets start getting an organizational makeover from new owner Steve Cohen. It’s hard to be patient, but it appears as if it’ll definitely be worth it.
As the search for a new president of baseball operations and general manager to report to Sandy Alderson continues, many of us are chomping at the bit to see the Hot Stove actually heat up. While we wait, looking back at the weirdness of a shortened 2020 season is a necessary exercise.
It allows us to glance in the rearview mirror of what ended up being a disappointing year before focusing forward on the hopefully more exciting and consistently competitive times coming in the future.
Upon looking at MLB’s detailed standings via Baseball Reference, it was clear the Mets didn’t exactly excel in any kind of situation. It’s tough to accomplish such a thing with a 26-34 record, but still, I was hoping to see them perform well in, like, at least one area. They didn’t.
It didn’t matter if they were facing a divisional opponent (17-23 record), an American League foe (9-11), were at home (12-17), on the road (14-17), went into extra innings (1-4), or played in a one-run game (6-11). Oh, and it didn’t matter if the opposing starting pitcher was right-handed (18-20) or left-handed (8-14). Any way you slice it, New York underperformed and just couldn’t get the job done.
This was actually in stark contrast to the 2019 club. Although their 86-76 record just barely missed a playoff spot, there were two specific situations where they performed incredibly well: at Citi Field (48-33) and against clubs with a losing record (39-21). Generally speaking, these are two of the ingredients that produce a winning team: taking advantage of playing at home and capitalizing on weaker competition. So even if a club is only able to tread water against winning teams, they’re still in contention because they took care of business in more favorable situations.
As you might’ve guessed, the Mets were below .500 against both winning (14-18) and losing teams (12-16) in 2020. That’s not surprising for a last-place team. However, I was curious as to how their performances in both situations looked in years past, and I was kind of surprised at what I found.
Here are the Mets’ records against winning and losing teams from 2010 until this past season.
How New York performed against winning teams were kind of all over the map (and mostly below .500 themselves). But before this past year, the last time they posted a losing record against losing teams was all the way back in 2011. So, even though manager Terry Collins didn’t enjoy his first winning season in Queens until 2015, the Mets usually found a way to win more often than not when facing fellow non-contenders.
If New York has plans on reaching October for the first time since 2016 next season, it’ll be crucial for them to view teams below .500 as an opportunity to feast and potentially create some space in the standings. Looking ahead to the 2021 season — assuming we’re back to a normal 162-game schedule — a strong start will also be important for New York.
Here’s how their schedule breaks down over the first month-plus with regard to opponent and number of games:
If we look at this through the lens of this past season’s performance, four of these clubs finished with losing records:
- Washington Nationals (26-34 record)
- Philadelphia Phillies (28-32)
- Colorado Rockies (26-34)
- Boston Red Sox (24-36)
While we can’t expect the Nationals’ performance to continue on at this level heading into 2021, the Phillies’ expected performance will probably hinge on what kind of offseason they end up having. The Rockies could be worse if they actually end up trading Nolan Arenado this winter, and who knows about the Red Sox, but they do have Alex Cora back in the dugout calling the shots.
When the regular season is its typical length, a good or a bad month at the start doesn’t guarantee anything. It can set the tone and put a team on a certain trajectory, though. Getting off to a fast start next April would give the Mets confidence to push ahead and also provide them with an early advantage among divisional opponents since 19 of their first 27 games are within the NL East.
There are lots of variables that go into a long regular season, but to give themselves a good chance of at least being in contention down the stretch, they must also return to taking care of business against losing teams.
